The Last Aerie (83 page)

Nathan had frowned and given his head a shake. “Not on Sunside, they haven’t.”

“Because you’ve been held back,” Zek had reasoned with him. “I’ve been there and I know. And I’m sure that you know, too, Nathan. Your people are clever and even sophisticated in their way. But for the constant oppression of the Wamphyri…”

“But for them—oh, a lot of things,” he had answered. “I wouldn’t be here, for one.”

And Trask had brought the conversation to a logical conclusion with: “And so it can be seen that they might well have brought about their own doom. You are Szgany; when you go home you can give the Szgany weapons beyond their wildest dreams, and far beyond the comprehension of the Wamphyri. But that’s then and this is now, and we’ve a way to go yet.”

Then Zek had given Nathan’s arm a squeeze and told him, “But we’ll get there. I know we will…”

They went to see the gutted ruins of Harry Keogh’s old house on the outskirts of Bonnyrig, not far from Edinburgh. It was snowing when they got there, huge soft flakes, and an inch of snow lay on the garden or what had been a garden. Trask told Nathan how it had been:

“There was no way we could let Harry alone, let him live here; I mean
here
, in this world. But at the same time I knew that your father was different in more ways than one. Oh, the Necroscope was Wamphyri, all right—was he ever! I saw him, spoke to him that night right here in this garden, and I
know
what he was! But he wasn’t the kind who would simply give in and submit to his fate, and never to a fate as cruel as that. So I … gave him a chance. E-Branch was out to get him; the Opposition were waiting for him at the Perchorsk Gate; even the Great Majority had forsaken him, but I trusted him. Looking back on it, you would be justified in believing I was out of my mind. But on the other hand, well, who would have known the truth of it better than I? At least I knew the truth
of the moment
: that Harry intended no harm.

“And the proof of that was to hand. He had deadly enemies right here, men who would kill him if they could. One of them was a telepath, but warped and full of hate. I’ll make a long story short: the Necroscope disarmed him and dragged him into the Mobius Continuum. Right then I thought I’d made a dreadful mistake, that I would never see that man again. But no, Harry did no harm but a lot of good. Somehow, he took away Geoffrey Paxton’s talent—which Paxton had used in the worst possible way—made him “ordinary”, returned him snivelling but physically unharmed to me here in the garden.

“All this while his house—this old, burned-out place, his last refuge on Earth—was blazing up in fire and smoke, and while there wasn’t a man or creature in the entire world who Harry could call friend.
Still
he didn’t betray us …”

“Not quite true, Ben,” Zek put in, quietly. “That he had no friends, I mean. He had you, and he had me. I knew what he was and was frightened of him when he came to see me in Zante. Wolf and I—especially Wolf, a real wolf, a Szgany watchdog—we both knew. But the Necroscope and I went back … oh, a long time, and I was still his friend. Harry was Harry. So I took a chance, too, and gave them shelter, him and his girl, while he arranged their departure from this world. The headlight beam of his motorcycle was the last I saw of him; when that beam blinked out and the roar of his engine was cut off, and the darkness crept in on me as never before, I knew we’d seen the last of him. And I wouldn’t be here now if something of him hadn’t come back at last.”

Nathan hugged his coat to him, shook off a thin layer of snow from his shoulders. “You … loved him?”

Zek and Trask glanced at one another. “Yes,” Trask answered, “I suppose we did, in a way.”

But Zek shook her head. “I’m not so sure,” she said. “You have to remember, I’d seen inside his head. And while he could be warm as a sunny day, he could also be cold. But a different kind of cold. One that cuts to the soul itself.” And looking at Nathan,
to
Nathan, she said:

You have it, too. I suppose it’s what makes you what you are. But be careful, Nathan, and make sure that the cold never outweighs the warmth …

Trask wasn’t party to this but knew that something had passed between them. And so his next statement was entirely coincidental when he shivered and said: “The cold is getting through to me. What do you say we get back to Edinburgh, the hotel, coffee and liqueurs?”

As they passed through the ruins and got into Trask’s car it started to snow more heavily. Grey figures came out of the opaque backdrop and climbed into a second car. Special Branch minders, they were never too far away…

* * *

Driving through Bonnyrig towards Edinburgh, Nathan received a mental impression of a dog. A big black and white mongrel, all lolloping and friendly, floppy-eared, and tongue lolling hot and wet. The sensation wasn’t telepathy or deadspeak but the next best thing, as if he were back on Sunside and his wolves were close by. He had used to “know” they were there, without knowing how. But here, in an alien world? It was strange.

That night he dreamed of the dog. And in the morning, over breakfast, he asked: “Can we drive back to that village close to where Harry lived?”

“Bonnyrig?” Trask raised a questioning eyebrow. “If you’d like to, of course we can. Any special reason?”

“I don’t know,” Nathan answered with a shrug. “It’s just a feeling—that someone knows me there.”

“But how could you know anyone there?”

“I don’t. But I think someone knows me …”

They went back to Bonnyrig, Trask driving slowly and carefully on the treacherous, black-iced roads. And as they passed street after street of neat, terraced houses, suddenly Nathan said: “Stop! This is it… I think.”

The dog-feeling was back, the dog-
mind
, impinging on his own.

As Nathan got out of the car, he teetered a little. Trask said, “Careful! That’s black ice. I know it looks like tarmac, but in fact you could skate on it!”

Zek, closer to Nathan’s telepathic mind, knew that he was suffering from a kind of disorientation, not from the slippery surface of the road. And catching Trask’s eye, she said, “Déjà Vu?”

Nathan was back in control of himself. Smiling, he said, “It’s down here.” And he made his way down a side street to the garden of a house with a shiny brass number seven on the gate, then up a short path to the door. And as Trask and Zek caught up, so he knocked.

“Nathan!” Trask was mildly alarmed. “Now what in the name of—?”

But Zek took Trask’s arm and quietly told him, “Just let it be, Ben. Nathan himself doesn’t know “what in the name of”. So let’s wait and find out.”

They didn’t have long to wait. Nathan’s knock was answered almost immediately by a tall, frowning, good-looking young man who was half-turned towards his visitors and half towards the interior of the house. Glancing at the three on the doorstep, he said, “Just a moment, please,” and called back into the house: “Paddy—will you stop that?” And again to his visitors, smiling now and by way of explanation: “My old dog. I don’t know what’s got into him!”

They heard a tumult of excited snuffling and barking from somewhere inside the house. And:

“Paddy,” Nathan said, nodding. “Yes.” As if the young man had just supplied the answer to something. And in his mind a sudden vision:
Dark skid marks burned into the tarmac … and Paddy, a mongrel puppy, dead in the gutter. One of the pup’s
forelegs flopping like a rubber band … its spine kinked and its shoulders askew … its partly-crushed head oozing brain fluid from a torn right ear.

The vision came—and was gone.

“Who is it, dear?” A slender, middle-aged woman came to the door, crowding the space beside the young man. Her eyes peered out from a dim corridor into the light of day, adjusting to the brightness. Then she saw Nathan and the others—but her eyes quickly returned to Nathan, and her gasp of recognition was perfectly audible. But in a moment, when she’d taken the time to think about it—whatever it was—she laughed and said, “No, it couldn’t be.”

Trask was fascinated. “What couldn’t be?”

“Oh, nothing,” she said. “But there was a young man we saw but once. A vet, he said. Fixed up Paddy after an accident. He looked so like you.” She turned again to Nathan. “But of course it couldn’t be, not possibly. For you’d be younger now than you were then, and that was all of … oh, sixteen, seventeen years ago!”

“Did you know this vet’s name?” This from Zek.

“Ah! That’s something I did know,” the woman answered. “I have a cousin of the same name, and so I remembered. It was a Mr. Keogh fixed Paddy up that time. And he did a good job, too, for the old dog’s as frisky as ever. He’s near-blind now, but never a day’s sickness for all his years!”

Trask and Zek felt the goose-flesh rise and looked at each other.

Maybe Paddy had heard his name mentioned. Whatever, he was curious. And now the two on the doorstep must make way for him, too. It was the large mongrel dog of Nathan’s dream and vision, of course. Squeezing out between his master and the young man’s mother, Paddy reared up—

—But in no way threateningly. Whining, Paddy kneaded Nathan’s stomach with his big front paws; his black and white mop of a head was tilted back; he tried desperately hard to lick the Necroscope’s face but couldn’t reach it.

And certain now, the woman gasped, “He …
knows
you!”

“No,” Nathan told her. “But I think he knew my father.”

She sighed and her hand flew to her mouth. “Of course! Of course! The resemblance is remarkable! But please come in.
Do
come on in!” And to her son: “Peter, do you remember?”

“Remember?” the young man cried, making way for the visitors and ushering them down a short passage beside the stairwell into a large living-room. I’ll say I remember. What a day that was. One to remember the rest of your life.”

And when the three were seated, to Nathan: “Your father was … he was like a miracle-worker!”

And Nathan and Zek together thought
: To say the least!
But out loud Nathan said, “What makes you say so?”

A middle-aged, grey-haired man had joined them from another room. He must have heard something of the conversation, and the excitement on his wife and son’s faces was unmistakable. “Your father was Mr. Keogh, eh? The vet? Well, and don’t we owe
him
a favour!” It was a statement of fact, not a question. “Aye, and doesn’t the auld dog there know it! He’s no like that wi’ just anyone, son.”

Paddy was at Nathan’s feet where the Necroscope sat on a couch, his forepaws in his lap, tongue lolling. Trask laughed. “Well, Paddy mightn’t see too well, but he certainly seems to know you!”

Nathan shrugged. “I… have a way with dogs.”

But now the grey-haired man was more serious. “So did your father,” he said. “A healing way. Ah’m John McCulloch, by the way. This is mah wife, Mary, and mah son, Peter. Peter was just a wee lad then, which has to make this the best aftercare a dog ever had! Can ah take it your father told you to look us up?”

“My father is … he’s dead,” Nathan answered. “But yes, he did say that if I was ever up this way …”

“Well, you’re very welcome,” Peter McCulloch told him, told all three. “Paddy has been a sheer joy all his life, yet at the time I would have sworn there was no life left in him. It was a car, on the corner out there. Paddy was … oh, a mess. So that I was sure he was dead. But Mr. Keogh took him away, and brought him back that same night. Like a new dog! Not a mark on him! To this day I still can’t believe it…”

“You’ll stay and take a meal with us?” Peter’s mother took Zek’s hand.

“I’m afraid we have other appointments,” Trask was quick to cut in. “In fact we have to be on our way right now. It’s just that —”

“It’s that my father said I would always find a welcome here,” Nathan finished it, standing up. “And I did…”

Back in the car, Trask said: “That—was amazing! How did you know? How
could
you have known?”

Nathan shook his head a moment, then looked at Trask curiously. “Ben, are you sure you’ve told me everything you know, about Harry? He was the Necroscope, yes: he talked to the dead and, when he was threatened, could even call them up to a semblance of life, for his protection. I know all that. You’ve told me all that. And actually it’s no great surprise. For after all I’m a Necroscope, too. But I feel there’s something else here, something different. I mean, the dead are dead, and Paddy was very much alive. I tried to read his mind through deadspeak and it didn’t work. Paddy is alive. Yet after all this time he remembered my father—the
feel
of his mind—and felt something of it in mine. Peter McCulloch told us he was sure at the time that his pup was dead. So … I suppose what I’m really asking is this: what other powers did Harry have? For it’s one thing to make the dead walk, but it’s quite another to make them live and breathe again.”

Trask stared studiously out through the windscreen at the road ahead and got his thoughts in order. For Nathan was right: that side of his father was rarely touched upon by E-Branch and had never been mentioned to Nathan himself. It was the difference between a Necroscope and a necromancer, between Good and Evil. And yet even as time ran out for him, Harry Keogh had not been evil. Only the
Thing
inside him had been that, which he’d somehow managed to keep under control until the bitter end.

He had not been evil… but he had been a necromancer. Necromancy: a dark, esoteric art which Harry had learned from Janos Ferenczy, last of an infamous line, at his castle in the Zarundului Mountains of Carpathia. This much Trask knew of it, and no more—except that Harry had used it to bring back not only a dog but men from the great beyond! Even now the Head of E-Branch didn’t much care to dwell on it, for he knew terrible mistakes had been made and that espers had died—one of them twice—unnecessarily.

As Trask thought these things so he glanced at Nathan out of the corner of his eye, and saw him staring back at him. Such was the other’s curiosity, he hadn’t been able to resist it. He had even framed his question in such a way that Trask couldn’t answer spontaneously but must think about it.